Beginning Rails 3

Just when we were getting used to Rails 2, along comes Rails 3. And along comes this book to explain the things you need to know in order to use it.

Bet let’s go back one step. Maybe you’ve never used Rails before? Maybe you’ve been given a job that requires that you use Rails 3 and you don’t even know where to begin. Well, this book is for you. The publisher describes ‘Beginning Rails 3’ as being “particularly well suited to those with little or no experience with web application development, or who have some experience but are new to Rails”.

The authors make it clear at the outset that the aim of the book is to cover the most important features of Rails rather than explaining advanced techniques. With this aim in mind, it begins with a quick overview of the Rails framework and its design principles. It explains how to install Rails and the tools and libraries of the language in which it is programmed (Ruby) on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. It goes step by step through the process of creating a basic application and running it via a web server. It then moves on to building a small Blog application (something that Rails is pretty good at) . This takes the reader through to the end of chapter 3.

From Chapter 4 onwards the authors delve into more of the nitty-gritty details of Rails: working with databases and Active Record, working with multi-table databases, exploring views and controllers, adding AJAX for user interaction, testing and deploying your applications and so on. There is even a short tutorial on the Ruby language which is (overoptimistically, in my view) compressed into a 13-page appendix. This may suffice as a quick start for an experienced programmer but it clearly covers no more than a few of the elementary features of Ruby programming.

My main criticism of this book is that it has very little to say about the two frameworks that preceded Rails 3 (namely Merb and Rails 2) and which cooperated in the creation of Rails 3. So if you are looking for guidance on upgrading older applications or if you need a reference to compatibility problems and their solutions, this is not the ideal book. If you are starting Rails 3 development from scratch, however, and you already have programming experience either in Ruby (ideally) or some other language then this book will provide you with a fairly easy introduction.